Patrick Grady: I do not think I have ever agreed with so many consecutive speeches from the Conservative Benches. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), on securing this debate.
It is great that we are getting to discuss the estimates on estimates day. Not so long ago, Members would have been called to order and dismissed from the Chamber for trying to do that, so this is one arrangement—possibly  the only arrangement—that has been a beneficial emergence from the establishment of English votes for English laws in this House. If EVEL is to be done away with, and I hope it is, I hope that this aspect of scrutinising line by line Government expenditure through the estimates is retained. Sadly, as the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling said, we are discussing only one line in today’s estimates documents. What was once an entire Department—the Department for International Development—with its own estimate and all the scrutiny that could accompany that has been reduced to one budget heading in HC14, the estimates document, on page 187, “Strategic priorities and other programme spending”. All the amazing, life-saving work carried out by DFID staff, partners, stakeholders and grassroots organisations around the world has been diminished not only by the savage cuts to the budget, but even by the way it is accounted for and reported in the Government’s spending paperwork.